Each summer for the past three years, Marlowe Brinson and K.C.
Adams have been holding a football camp in memory of Brinson’s son
Myles who died of leukemia at the age of 8 in May 2002.
Each summer for the past three years, Marlowe Brinson and K.C. Adams have been holding a football camp in memory of Brinson’s son Myles who died of leukemia at the age of 8 in May 2002. They called it the Myles Brinson Fundamentals of Football Camp.
Never did Adams think he’d be adding his son’s name to the camp’s title this year.
In March, Adams lost his own son, 17-year-old J.R., in a hit-and-run accident in Mexico. J.R. Adams was a standout on the Valley Christian football team and had earned a full scholarship to play the sport at the University of Idaho.
“Our lives run so parallel,” remarks Marlowe as he and K.C. sit and talk in the athletic office at Anchorpoint Christian High School, where the Myles Brinson-J.R. Adams Fundamentals of Football Camp will be held this coming week.
While Marlowe Brinson was enduring a rough childhood with virtually no family support in Chicago Heights, Ill., K.C. Adams was growing up in Oakland, basically living the same life.
Years later in Gilroy, the paths of the two men crossed and they became like family. They call each other “brother” and refer to each others’ children as their nieces and nephews.
“I can’t describe it,” Marlowe says. “He’s my brother and people don’t understand it. Our life has been the same. I went through the same thing, just in a different state.”
And they share a common love for the game of football. For both, it was their ticket to an education and a better life.
Team leaders
Marlowe Brinson and K.C. Adams say their sons were the “charismatic” kids who were always bringing home friends, often to play football. When family and friends would get together at picnics at the park, they would play the game, with the two fathers quarterbacking each team. Before they knew it, kids from other families would be in on the game. K.C. remembers parents would ask, “Are you here every week?” thinking the game had been organized.
“No, we just happened to be here,” he would reply. “I don’t even know (these kids)!”
That’s when the two men decided they should put together a football camp.
“We were playing out there anyway,” K.C. says, laughing.
The two had enough football knowledge. K.C. Adams played at Gavilan College after high school and then moved on to play at San Jose State. Marlowe Brinson left Illinois to play college ball at Merced Junior College and at San Francisco State.
In January of 2002, Marlowe and K.C. started seriously planning the camp, but they began getting bogged down by all the red tape of putting on such an event. Additionally, Myles was in his second year of battling leukemia.
With all that was going on, K.C. says no one thought the camp was a good idea. But Myles’ attitude brought some much-needed inspiration.
“Myles was a fighter all through (his battle with leukemia). Never for one moment did he quit,” K.C. says. “It was, ‘O.K., what do we got to do now?'”
Myles’ situation became even more of a reason for the two men to make sure the camp got off the ground. But Marlowe and K.C., both devout Christians, wanted to make the camp about more than football. They also wanted to teach life lessons to kids who needed them, kids like the ones they had once been.
“Two kids can come from dirt, from the projects. We’ve been through the ringer,” K.C. says. “But we worked hard enough. You can have a better life if you break the cycle.”
Just a couple of months before the camp was to take place, on May 10, two days before Mother’s Day, Myles lost his battle with leukemia. His father and mother, Sherida, were by his bedside.
“It seems just like yesterday that I was standing praying with him and her,” Marlowe says.
“We could hear a breath and the next minute …” he pauses, “… you don’t.”
In the months leading up to the camp, the two men couldn’t think of a name to give it. But when Myles died, K.C. Adams knew it had to be named after the brave youngster and held in his honor. He surprised Marlowe with a plaque with the camp’s new, official name on it.
This year, Marlowe did the same thing for his brother.
An aching pain
For K.C. Adams, the pain of the loss of his son hasn’t dulled.
He’s still accepting the postseason awards J.R. Adams earned, including Cal-Hi Sports Offensive Player of the Year. College football coaches still call the Adams’ home with scholarship offers for J.R. They’re calls that K.C. Adams just can’t bring himself to take. He respectfully asks them to call Valley Christian.
“I’m just not to that point yet,” K.C. says. “I miss my son and I just haven’t gotten over that yet.”
K.C., a hair stylist as well as serving as athletic director and teaching physical education at Anchorpoint Christian, says he plans on bringing a football team to the school in three years. By that time his other son, Quillan, 11, could be ready to play for the team.
After that, a state championship is the goal. That was the dream J.R. had for the proposed team when he heard that the California Interscholastic Federation had approved a California state football championship.
K.C. says it was his son’s dream to go to college, play football and come back to Gilroy to coach and get the same satisfaction out of it his dad does.
“He’d see the look on my face when I coached and he’d say, ‘Dad, I watched you and I want that look,'” K.C. says.
Both Marlowe Brinson and K.C. Adams remember the impact good coaches had on their lives and the lessons they taught them. In many ways, football saved their lives, they say.
With the blessing of their sons, they’ll have that same impact on campers this week.
“The camp is not about football,” Marlowe says. “It’s about respecting one another and learning to appreciate one another and loving one another and not taking things for granted.”
